Hoenn Fever
by Plane Wanderer
Summary: Strange trainer with a foreign pokemon travels through Hoenn, trying to enjoy what he's got.


**Just enjoy the story. If you don't piss off.**

A nice breeze blows through the air, the smell of ocean salt wafting up to the nose of a Tauros and his trainer, me. "I guess it's the tide, huh buddy?" I pet the pokemon I'm sitting with, and he moos.

Been some long weeks. I'm alone now, only friend I got with me is Tauros. Not much to do from here, just a regular busy shipping town. It's also a pretty popular tourist destination, as I can tell firsthand cause this beach is packed. I look around, some sand blows around a bit further up the beach, little kids battling. Pretty easy money they were, won't challenge me again though. Doesn't matter to me though, plenty of new trainers come traveling through. It's a nice thing, knowing that all I need to do to live for the day is to just beat somebody at a battle. Of course, that goes backwards as well, if I lose a battle I may not have enough time to try again and get enough for food that day. It doesn't matter too much to me, for now I get to live at the beach.

The hot summer sun, it doesn't seem to end here. Every day I've been out here sweating, just enjoying the freedom. What I got is the sand and sun, so I enjoy the sand and sun by taking nice sunbaths all day working on my tan. Tauros has his fur sure, but he likes to be out of his pokeball so I just let him take the umbrellas shade and run in the water when he wants.

You can hear some of the conversations: a kid just got his second badge and is trying to find another gym here, two daughters complaining to their parents about the heat, old perv flirting with some broad, some chicks asking to ride Tauros. Ahh, what a nice thing for resting. I close my eyes and sink into the chair with a sigh. Then I feel my foot hit something. I open my eyes, a girl. In fact, two of them.

"May I help you?"

"Uhh, yeah." She seems annoyed. "May we want to ride the pokemon you have?

"Huh," I pull my droopy face up and stand up to them, "hmm. Alright just hop on, Tauros come on up." The three tailed bull stands up. "Can you trot around with uhh..." I turn to the shorter one, "what's your name?"

"Melonie".

"Trot around with Melonie on your back alright bud?" The bull moos and nods. I pat his back, "Just hop on and he'll take care of you".

"Wait, you're not hopping on with her?" The taller one sounds surprised.

"Hey chill out, I've known him his whole life, besides she's fine," I turn to Melonie, "Aren't you?"

"Uhh, yeah I'm good I got this. Don't worry Gwen". Melonie gives a thumbs up.

"See, she gots it." I shrug and smug, and tap Tauros' buttocks to get him going. Sure enough, he's slow. "So you're Gwen?"

"Yeah, thanks for letting my friend ride your pokemon. Uhh..." she's watching the Tauros walk around the beach, "So what's your name?"

"It's um," I look up and back down, "It's Eddy..." Me and her go back and forth a bit, but I'm really watching the Tauros. I see a kid run past, and sand gets in it's nose. Haha, here we go. He starts racing around, charging through battles on the beach, stomping near people, hahaha.

"Well are you gonna do something mister?" I hear Melonie screaming from her flopping body trying to hang on.

"Got it!" I run over in front of Tauros, he's charging straight at me. I grab his horns as he pushes me back, my legs go deep in the sand. My feet are getting shredded down there, I'm not slowing him down much. I look in his eyes, seems more tired, watery. Got it! I jump up on Tauros. "Sorry miss," as I push Melonie back and take the reins. Some stomps on a beach chair, running through an umbrella, but no people hurt. We get to the water and I plunge him in. I grab the girl, well she's already holding me tight, and jump into the water. Shallow, burns my feet though.

"Why didn't you just use your Pokeball?" Gwen comes up to us as we get out of the water, taking her friend. Nagging already, damn. I see some people come up, angry.

"Well I wanted to make sure your friend wouldn't fall on the sand fast," I turn around and look at my legs, making sure they see the skin, or lack of it, on my heels, "besides my Tauros wanted the sand out of his nose." Some of the scorn goes away. "Listen, I'm sorry if I caused you trouble. I just wanted to make sure my bud was alright, you know you can't treat your pokemon like a tool, it's not right." Tauros walks up to me as I finish, as if he knew what I was saying. Total bro. Some more scorn goes away, some people even looking sorry for my poor condition.

"Thank you," Melonie speaks a bit, the rest of the scorn goes away. Even her friend, though still clearly a bit angry, looks down at my gash and the bloody sand behind me. I walk up to the two girls and ask them if they want to walk to a safe place, inside. I can carry her if she wants.

We head up to the seaside cafe right near the city, Tauros stays outside. I put her down on the couch, her friend sits adjacent on the chair.

"Do you need anything, a water or a lemonade? I can pay, for all the trouble." I don't really know why I'm doing this, I don't necessarily like either of them.

"Yeah, please. Lemonade." Gwen gives me a bit of a stare as she states that. I go over to the soda machine and pop in a few coins, three lemonades out. I set down the cans and tell them I'm gonna clean my leg up. The restroom is clean atleast, I take a seat on the counter and wash the wound in the sink. Stings like hell, getting the sand out, but it's necessary. Half the time it'll stay in the skin under the scab and takes a long time for the body to break down. Bleeding stops, most of it just the bare pink underneath. Ugh! Whatever. I dry them off and wrap them up in toilet paper, I come out looking like half-job mummy. "Uhh, your beast is being talked to by some guys outside." Gwen tells me and I look outside.

Journalists! Not today. I run out the doors and up to them.

"And here comes your master, the one who couldn't control you. Sir, do you have a mo-" I shove the camera out of the dudes hands onto the sand.

"Piss off, I don't want your bs. Get out of here!"

"Huh, you just broke our equipment. You want to battle or just pay now?" The reporter tells me while the cameraman is rubbing the sand off.

"Actually it's just the screen ma'am, the footage in it it still fine."

"Shut up Rami, do you want to get the story or not?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Broken camera, just her and me. "Yeah, I'll battle you. Then you walk off, I was having an alright day."

"Sure you were." She smiles as she pulls a pokeball from her satchel.

"Tauros," She throws a Roselia, "down on up."

Tauros breaks immediately into a dash and uses horn attack on the Roselia, blasting her in the air. That probably surprised her.

"Roselia, absorb!" The reporter shouts, her eyes pretty fearful. A stream of energy can be seen coming fro and back to Roselia, as it tries to gain back some of it's lost health.

"Tauros, up on down." It jumps on the building and jumps again, tackling the Roselia to the ground with a large thud. Even sand is hard at such a weight. My Tauros comes and walks back on to me, I don't see the Roselia get up. "Now get out of hear." The cameraman, Rami, looks stunned, he's just holding the camera in his shoulder and his face blank at me. The woman doesn't look so happy though, she ran off to get the Roselia and her face turned to me angrily. They head off though, and I decide to put Tauros back in the ball.

When I head back inside I see Mel is asleep on the couch, but Gwen is thoroughly excited by my fight.

"Are you finishing the league?" First question of the night.

"No, not really my style."

"Your style! Bruh, you just defeated those dudes in two moves."

"Anybody can if they're a high enough level."

"Yeah but the way you did it! You didn't use take down. You used a combo."

"What if I wanted to make sure every hit landed?"

"You tossed it up using horn attack and tackled it not just with your strength but also the ground."

"He can't learn seismic toss."

"So you got around that. That's cool man, I'm sure you'd attain a few easy badges from this."

"Listen, why are you so interested anyhow?"

"Well I'm a bit older than my friend." I look to the left and the right, back at her.

"Okay..."

"I'm of age..." Was she not supposed to be?

"Uh huh..." What does she want me to say.

"To go on an adventure!" Oh thank god. "I thought you were a bit uncool, being not able to control your pokemon." I was always in perfect control... "But your fighting skills are good! All I've wanted to be is leave home and though I know my friend would be sad, but I have to take the chance now before I go to school."

"Okay... I'm on vacation now." She carries a wary look. "Here, I'll give you my number, hand me your pokenav." She does, just so easily. "There you go. I think I'm going to head out now, you two are fine right?"

"Oh, uh yeah we're fine. Hmph. She'll sleep a bit and be fine." She's back to being cold, funny. I turn around to head out "Hey are you gonna reply?"

"You said you're fine."

"The text!" Oh, yeah, probably wants to make sure I didn't give her a wrong number. "Alright. Cool, see you Eddy." Huh... strange to hear that.

The rest of the day is uneventful. I spend most of it walking around the market, looking at the fresh food. Not much money though, so I have to just keep walking. By the time dusk heads around I'm in the port area, near the edge of town. Probably going to sleep in a tree, don't want to sleep in the center, can't sleep in a hotel. I climb a fence, and a tree, and sit up. I grab my pokeball and look inside, Tauros is already sleeping. It's still far too hot for me to sleep, don't know how the hikers and other trainers do it. Suddenly, a call. From the only contact I have.

"Oh my god your fight was on the news!"

"..." I don't know what to say.

"Eddy you hearing me?"

"Uhh... what kind of news?"

"It's just local," oh thank god, "but the entire thing. There's like a crack in the screen, and no sound, but it's totally still cool."

"Where does the local station reach?"

"It's just Slateport and Mauville, maybe some of the flyovers through the forest."

"Alright thanks for telling me." I hear her scream some words that I can't make out as I hang up on her.

I start walking the route north.


End file.
